What Technology Demands

NOTE:  This post is a bit of an experiment, involving three previous bloggers and a new contributor: regular posters, the brother-team of Carl and Chuck Hunt; Larry Kuznar, who has previously posted twice; and Carl’s friend, MacArthur Fellow Stuart Kauffman. [1]  We think it’s a sufficiently worthy topic that we thought we’d shoot for a multidisciplinary perspective: information technology, naturalism, anthropology and biology.  All of these disciplines are part of the connecting fabric of the American Promise.  This post commemorates our 50^th Blog Post! [2]

Carl:  Two weeks ago, my Samsung Galaxy IV told me I needed nine app updates.  Last week, it was another 13.  Every week, it’s the same thing.  Our smart phones are pretty darned smart the way they have us trained.  Don’t get me started about the constant care these things need in terms of recharging (feeding?)!  After years of similar experiences updating all the various versions of my Windows computers, I wonder less and less “who” the master is in this human-technology relationship: I’m starting to be convinced that it’s technology.  Larry, is this the future of mankind or is it the future repeating the past?

Larry:  This is very much the future repeating the past.  Our ancestors’ ability to develop technology has definitely been one key edge our species had over others.  That day (approximately 2.5 million years ago) an ancient hominid struck a sharp stone from a rock and used it to slice some valuable protein from a scavenged carcass set us on an irreversible path of technological dependence.  Today we are forced to adapt to our built environment (which concentrates the exchange of pathogens, relieves selection for heat or cold resistance, enables us to acquire mates without travel).  In fact, we adapt more to our built environments than to nature outside of our walls.

Chuck:  Larry, you are so right.  The issue about our “built environment” is huge!  We have to ask “where is our ‘think space,’ where’s our space to be human?”  In The Singing Wilderness, Sigurd F. Olson writes as though our technology-driven world, which is increasingly devoid of real things, is not optimal habitat for humans.  Hearing birds sing, smelling a field after a shower, or reading the skies are things that have been part of the human existence for thousands of years.  The abrupt shift, in human time anyway, to this stressful technology-driven life is likely causing behavioral and health dysfunction.  The biological foundation for Olson’s philosophy comes from a theory he proposed as “racial memory.”  He held that we humans have a biological need to connect with nature.  The societal ramifications of all of this will not be known for quite some time.  Generally, rapid shocks in habitat lead to species decline (or extinction), at least until adaptation occurs, which can take generations.

Carl:  The effects on nature and our interactions with it are a big deal, Larry and Chuck, and could indeed affect us for a very long time.  If we think of technology as a “living system” as Kevin Kelly writes in What Technology Wants, technology does seem to be better at adaptation than humans!

What really got me thinking about this lately was a Politico article entitled “How Google Could Rig the 2016 Election” based on some recent National Academy of Sciences research about the same topic.  I find it hard not to think of Google as a well-motivated and well-intentioned company, but what if technology is beginning to take on a life form that we are in fact are only now starting to visualize as Kevin Kelly claims?  Is it possible for our technologies to “rig a national election” without human intervention or intent?

Stu, you know Kevin Kelly and former Google CEO Eric Schmidt fairly well.  As a biologist and physician, is there something going on here that even transcends our human intentions and inventions?  Did biology enable technology or is it the other way around?

Stu:  Yes, something very big is going on.  Both the evolving biosphere and the evolving economy, including technologies, create the very possibilities into which they “become”, often beyond anyone knowing even what “can happen”.  First, Chuck is right. We are ever more alienated from Nature in late modernity to our rue and dysphoria.  We evolved as part of Nature, but now think we are separate and somehow “above” the Nature that is “ours” to command, not nurture.  Second, think of a web of economic goods and production functions, including technologies.  Once one exists, it creates “adjacent possibilities” into which it can become, although no one may have intended how the total system becomes.  These adjacent possible creations happen without a human plan.  This is Kelly’s What Technology Wants.  Somehow, we lost contact with our natural roots in the 18^th Century with the Industrial Revolution and the explosion of new technologies that enable the further explosion that rushes at us ever more rapidly.  We have not faced this in the past 50,000 years, nor do we know what is wise.  And, we definitely don’t know how much further this will drive us from our natural roots in the future: that’s just not prestatable, no matter how well we think we can plan for what’s ahead.

Larry:   And this is so much the story of human social (not biological) evolution. Technological innovations seem to have been entirely developed to solve immediate needs, with little or no consideration of their long-term consequences.  The earliest stone tools enabled a hominid with an increasing brain to feed this hungry organ, enabling an adjacently possible outcome of even greater reliance on intelligence and imagination as a means to adapt.  I doubt that any Homo habilis realized it was creating the foundation for metaphysical thought and the development of the World’s great religions.

Archaeologists have pretty well concluded that the domestication of plants and animals solved a problem of increasing hunter-gatherer populations, which meant increasing conflict over wild resources.  However, increased sedentism also enabled women to have more children, and these rapidly increasing human populations only engendered more conflict, which lead to the formation of tribal societies and ethnic violence.  A quick look at the world news demonstrates that we have anything but shaken off the mantle of tribal warfare.  The list goes on.  A technological innovation solves one problem, but opens up multiple adjacently possible pathways that humans never imagined.  As Stu said, these pathways are not prestatable!

Carl:   It appears that technology has learned how to build and exploit Stu’s adjacent possibilities better than we ever could.  Is this also what Kelly is telling us?  Has technology learned better the lessons that nature offered and we rejected to assimilate humanity rather than vice versa?  Could the possibility of a “rigged election” that the National Academy of Sciences study reflected be just another step in Kurzweil’s proposed “accelerating intelligence?”  Is it possible to think of technology, particularly information-based technology, as an emerging life form or species?  Does technology do a better job of fulfilling its demands from us than we do of it?

Chuck:   So now this discussion appears to be entering into the realm of philosophy or even ethics.  Perhaps the pace of technological change and our growing prowess is forcing us to take this issue more seriously, but it isn’t new either.  The pace may be accelerated and the impact may be new, but this is an issue that humans have struggled with since the beginning of applying technology to “make things better.”  Natural resource management abounds with examples of humans actually exacerbating problems through technology.

Just to offer one of countless examples and one with which I have been involved professionally, Tamarix, or Salt Cedar, was introduced to the United States from Asia in the early 1900s to help prevent erosion.  The goal was noble.  Erosion has many harmful affects including degraded water quality, loss of productive soils, lowering of the water table, etc.  However, within a short period, people noticed that Tamarix was taking over large areas, river flows decreased and water tables were actually receding.  Subsequent research showed that Tamarix actually are massive consumers of water and easily out-compete other vegetation.  Once lush, diverse riparian communities along rivers were becoming monocultures of Tamarix!  The environment of the American Southwest would have been greatly improved had Tamarix never been introduced.  It really was a technologically-derived dilemma.

The point is that mankind has been reckless in the application of all kinds of technology probably since the advent of “technology.”  As a result of Tamarix and other unhelpful exotic species, most nations have become more careful about introducing new flora or fauna to ecosystems.  However, I am not sure we have applied these lessons to the “human ecosystem” (which is really an integrated if artificial construct as well, isn’t it?).  Could we be disrupting our health through unchecked embrace of information technology?  Or, is an embrace of technology the only way to save us from the ecological effects of a human population explosion combined with rising standard of living expectations?

Hence, is this a philosophical debate or a debate concerning the survival of mankind, or both?  Likely it is both…we’re not going to reject technology and I hope we’re not going to stop being human; the question is how thoughtful should we be and how thoughtful can we afford to be.

Larry:  Great questions, Carl and Chuck!  Let me take an anthropological stab at each.  Does technology adapt to us better than we adapt to it? Historically, humans have been required to replicate technology, and the human environment has selected which elements would be replicated or go extinct.  Technology has been more like a virus or a domesticated plant or animal, basically dependent on its host for its replication. Had our ancestors been sufficiently aware of the effects of technology and how they wanted it to impact human life, they could have guided this evolution more rationally toward a desired end beyond our typically short-sighted need to solve an immediate problem.  For technology to adapt to us like an autonomous organism, it would need to have the ability to self-replicate.  With modern robotics and AI, some argue that technology appears to be gaining those abilities and may begin adapting better than us. [3]

Chuck, the Tamarix example is a great illustration!  I spent the better part of a decade conducting research on the Navajo Reservation, and indeed, Tamarix checked streamside erosion in the fragile biophysical ecosystem; but sheep and cattle can’t eat Tamarix, and its introduction further eroded a fragile human ecosystem, the traditional Navajo indigenous economy.

Is technology disrupting our health or saving us?  We are all familiar with the many ill health effects from the by-products of technology.  However, technology, through improved medicine, sanitation, and food production has caused global childhood mortality to plummet from over 40% to about 3% in the last 200 years. [4]  That’s a lot more people in the gene pool!  The net effect is astounding evolutionary success.  Of course, if the world’s 7 billion people increasingly demand and get energy from fossil fuels, they may destroy the planet’s ability to sustain them.  That would be an astounding evolutionary failure.  Talk about adjacently possible pathways!

Is this a philosophical debate or one about the survival of humankind?  I think it’s about the survival of ways of life that we value, and therefore, it is both.  When we’re concerned about what technology has done to our lives, we are expressing our concern about the state, or form, of things.  But evolutionary theory is a theory of process.

The questions that began this discussion reflect human values about the state of our lives.  However, all we may ever really understand is how we got to where we are and how we may proceed into the future; what the state of our future lives will be and how we would value it is, as our colleague Stu notes, just not prestatable.  By exploring the possibilities, though, we may avoid hurtling ourselves headlong into an adjacently possible future we would not want our descendants to experience.  Even then, we are presuming that our descendants will share the values we hold today.

Stu:  I think we are touching some of our deepest issues.  Larry and Chuck are so right about how we act in the biosphere with often unexpected consequences.   We were taught to stop forest fires, Smokey Bear, then learned that small fires were normal and we had allowed the understory to grow to enable vast fires.  DDT ravaged.  But the issues are very much broader, embracing not only technology, but the evolution of our economic system with its power structures, the banks too big to fail that evolve into a legal environment that itself evolves in often unprestatable ways as unprestatable loopholes are found in laws that enable new strategies with unknown payoffs that call forth new laws so the legal-economic-social system “becomes” in partially unprestatable ways, and finally into the opportunities that vault out of what is currently present.

Larry is also right-on about our “values”.  To borrow historian Thomas Cahill’s phrase, I think we are at a hinge of history, in which our thirty or more civilizations around the globe are weaving together, on a finite planet, where we still wage war: this is what the connectivity this blog addresses is all about.  What values will guide us?  It seems to me that this post touches, far beyond Kelly and What Technology Wants, how we “become” as a global set of interwoven civilizations, where what already is unleashes often unprestatable opportunities for good and ill into which we are almost ineluctably “sucked”.  If we cannot design what we become, our values must be our guide.

Carl and Chuck:  We are most grateful to Stu and Larry for joining us in this special 50^th Blog Post in Reconnecting to the American Promise.  While it may take a little imagination to see the connection to RAP and other important topics we’ve covered, such as reflected in the National Strategic Narrative, I think my friend Wayne Porter and his Strategic Narrative coauthor Puck Mykleby would agree that in the end it is our values, as Stu so eloquently concludes, that make us the nation we are and the individuals that form our society.  If in the end, we cannot prestate the design of how we Reconnect to the American Promise, perhaps we can reconnect to the great American values upon which we originally emerged as the United States of America.

End Note from Carl:  This morning, the date of the posting of this piece, my Galaxy Note IV needed only four updates.  That still seems a little needy, but at least not so demanding.

NOTES:

[1] Actually, some of Stu’s recent work has been previously mentioned in Survival at the “Hinge of History”, posted in this blog in June, 2015.

[2] This title is a bit of a takeoff on Kevin Kelly’s What Technology Wants, Viking Books, New York, 2010.  According to the book website, the topic “…suggests that technology as a whole is not just a jumble of wires and metal but a living, evolving organism that has its own unconscious needs and tendencies.”

[3] Martin Ford, Rise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of a Jobless Future, Basic books, New York, 2015.

[4] http://ourworldindata.org/data/population-growth-vital-statistics/child-mortality/

Some Peace and Quiet, Please

How about some peace and quiet in this summer of 2015?  After all, does everything in America today have to be driven by a totally distracting and all-too-early political season?  Doesn’t America deserve a little peace and quiet?

This seems like reasonable line of inquiry.  It’s summer time and we’re supposed to enjoy a little vacation, right?  Why on earth would all those politicians involve themselves in the summer debate fray when they could be lying on the beach, hiking mountain trails or just spending time with their families?

We thought we might ask the leaders of our two major political parties a few questions about that.

Are the two parties missing a key narrative in the 2016 race for the Whitehouse (aside from not being able to read the calendar)?  Is it possible that the majority of the American people just want a little break and enjoy the summer?  Maybe there really isn’t a huge desire for change in America outside of a few key issues.  That’s our gut feeling anyway.

Here’s why…

It strikes us that since the 1960s and 70s, our two political parties have somehow managed to make happen most of the big changes that Americans wanted.  It’s starting to look like now the parties are creating a quest for continued change only for the sake of change and may be getting a little too creative.  It’s quite possible their quest for change is causing anxiety across the electorate.

It’s our sense that most Americans just want us all to take a breather and let things settle down for a while.  We know the scientific, technological and social fabrics of America (and indeed the world) are changing but is it really necessary to add political chaos to those changes?  We can adapt to those changes with just a little collective social objectivity, but politics don’t need to get in the way of that!

We believe a smarter approach would be for the parties to test a strategy to slow down and reduce the dramatic changes to our policies and enjoy what we have now, for just a bit at least: give some things a chance to work out.  Relook the National Strategic Narrative paper we pointed to in the earlier days of the blog.

There are a few areas we could still work on but we don’t have to pursue the increasingly lengthy frenetic political campaigns, just some good governance.

We believe a smart approach to better governance would be to tell American politicians that we, the American people, have had enough progress on right and left wing goals.  We now need to roll up our sleeves and just tackle a few changes where there is largely consensus.

Our recommended platform would be no new regulations and programs or laws for the next four years with the exception of:

• Address income inequality. We’re not perfectly sure what this looks like, but the top CEO and officers of companies do not need to make (or are worth) 300 times more than the average employees.  Please Red: get serious about this one and pay attention to mainstream America for a change.  This could be provided for by enhanced visibility of salary rates for the public and shareholders for senior officers in organizations: things will tend to work out from there.  We’re not real sure what else to propose, but we believe the public would support something to start the trend towards more transparency and equality of opportunity for all to succeed.
• Contain the cost of college tuition and medical care. Cost increases in both these sectors are far above average inflation and are hollowing out the middle class.  No one is bothering to explain to the rest of us why this is taking place.  Both Red and the Blue should think hard about this and act together on behalf of America!
• Give the middle class a tax break by lowering the payroll tax to 5% and remove the cap on wages subject to the tax. This would provide an immediate boost to our economy and help stabilize the social security fund.  Again, this should appeal to both parties.
• Remove incentives to offshore business operations, headquarters and profits. This would bring jobs and investment home.  Red, we need some help on this one.
• Control our borders and provide for orderly and at least for a while, less immigration. Increase the penalties further for hiring illegal immigrants and enforce existing laws.  This could possibly apply a little upward pressure on wages and help address income inequality.  We’ve read that in some parts of the country summer jobs are almost a thing of the past for native born Americans because so many jobs are now taken by immigrants.  We want to offer economic opportunity for everyone but America must be stable in its own right before we can offer stability to the rest of the world.  Blue, you can particularly help here.
• Improve our infrastructure. Pass a long-term infrastructure bill funded by a five cent increase on gas taxes.  This will make jobs and help provide long-term economic security for the country.
• Lift the ban on oil exports but place a reasonable tax on oil exports that is strictly earmarked to develop alternative energy.  Make alternative energy our “space program” of the 2020s.  It is the right thing to do for our economy, our future (e.g., our kids’) energy security and the environment long term.  Come one, Red and Blue…get on this!
• Develop a bipartisan carbon tax law to address climate change challenges and consider a tax on importation of goods from countries that are not complying with greenhouse reductions agreements.  Blue and Red: show more interest in the science here, now…please!

9)      Implement a freeze on all entitlements except for Social Security.  This will get people to the table to improve service delivery and change eligibility requirements.  On Social Security, gradually increase eligibility ages (again) and implement a comprehensive disability re-evaluation program to reduce the number of fraudulent recipients.  Both Red and Blue have an important role to play here.

Successful outcomes in tackling these nine areas would not solve all our problems, but we believe each would be valuable steps in the right direction.  They would give the public a breather on at least some fronts where a delay won’t be lethal.  We are confident many Americans would support most of these proposals.  And it’s something we could do together regardless of political affiliation.

We realize there are a lot of issues we don’t address here, including one of the most important: fair and equal treatment for all, considering gender and race in particular.  We offer no excuses for this, and will simply defer to the Principles of RAP.

What do you say…should we start enjoying the seasons now, the coming holidays included, instead of running for offices not even up for election for another year?  Do this for America, you two!

Posted by Chuck Hunt and Carl Hunt, 8/13/2015

Washed-Up Thinking

by Carl W. Hunt

My wife and I are fortunate to live near the beach. As I’ve described before, we live in Lewes, Delaware, where the Atlantic Ocean and the Delaware Bay meet at Cape Henlopen. The bay and Cape Henlopen were first discovered by Henry Hudson; none other than William Penn, the first governor of the Pennsylvania colony, set aside Cape Henlopen to be a family “park” in the designation of some of the first public lands in America.

We can walk to Lewes Beach on the Delaware Bay side, but have to drive or bike to the Atlantic beach at Cape Henlopen State Park. We often find sea glass or pottery from sunken ships washed up on the shore…walking the beaches and looking for these simple treasures are a pleasurable pastime for us as coastal residents. This week we found a piece of well-weathered green sea glass washed up on the bay-side of Cape Henlopen Point. This discovery struck me as symbolic of what my brother Chuck and I have intended to demonstrate with Reconnecting to the American Promise.

In addition to just walking on the beach, bloggers are often inspired to write about news events or commentaries they’ve recently read…sometimes we feel compelled to make our thoughts known relative to our frame of reference. I found a bit of inspiration from that piece of sea glass and a commentary I read this week for work, tilted “The Menace of Menace” by Anna Simons, a professor at the Naval Postgraduate School.

The observant reader might note the small seashell trapped in the mouth of the bottle-top of the glass my wife and I found. Perhaps the small creature originally in this shell simply got lodged within the glass by the movement of the water in the bay, or perhaps it sought protection and wedged itself in. In any event, this shell was not going anywhere without being damaged if was removed…it was stuck.

According to Anna Simons, America is stuck in a cycle of thinking and acceptance of being stuck that is damaging our present and dimming our future. This thinking cycle is disconnecting us from the American Promise.

Simons, an anthropologist like our friend Larry Kuznar (author of two posts in this blog), describes our thinking in the context of the “menace” of terror and violence that America and the West have helped to promulgate in the veil of social structures that exist today. “By having helped market to the world the notion that menace is an acceptable lifestyle choice, we have helped make atrocities more rather than less likely” Simons writes.

I had to go back and make sure I knew the dictionary meaning of “menace” to confirm I understood Simons’ use of the word, and in terms of what the social thinking of America and the West in this generation has empowered, she nailed it. We don’t use the word today as much as we have in the past, but the word is appropriate to the current age. Dictionary.com defines menace as “something that threatens to cause evil, harm, injury, etc.; a threat” or “a person whose actions, attitudes, or ideas are considered dangerous or harmful.”

Simons continues “We Americans have come to lionize menace on the big screen, the small screen, and the computer screen, in the music industry, the fashion industry, and the sports industry. Look at how legions of Americans dress, and listen to how they talk—with expletive-laced vitriol…It is not just those who portray menace, but also those who produce and direct menace-as-entertainment.”

I’m old-fashioned…I admit it. I find the “expletive-laced vitriol” as part of everyday language difficult to take. If this and “menace-as-entertainment” have become as mainstream as Simons writes, America is indeed supporting the acceptance of menace as a socially acceptable behavior and it’s pouring over into the rest of the world without our realizing it. This collective social acceptance is not only disconnecting our own people from the American Promise, it’s disconnecting the rest of the world.

There are probably several underlying causes of this social trend in America, but one stands out that’s consistent with this blog’s published philosophies about small towns and community-based living. Simons notes that “one downside to so few of us living in small-scale, face-to-face societies, villages, or communities is that bad social actors used to be objects of withering scorn and thus served as object lessons for how to not behave.” This is really important because it suggests the critical need for communities to be cohesive, be socially responsible and to police themselves.

Behaviors generated from the lower levels upward are the true builders of culture and society. This is right in line with what our friends Wayne Porter and Puck Mykleby have published in the National Strategic Narrative, also a source of blog posts for RAP.

According to Simons, we’ve stopped thinking about our responsibilities in growing good communities and culture in America and have let our society slip away as we accept and even nurture the growth of menace in the world. That’s where we as a nation have drifted in the wrong direction and gotten stuck in the sea glass, as it were.

It’s not too late to get unstuck, Simons writes: “…the only effective way to rescue future generations here and abroad from further innovations in crude violence…is to make less of menace. Otherwise, without doing something about the proliferation of this meme, the menace from menace will only intensify.”

To that, I would add that this acceptance of menace has washed up on our shores, just as that piece of sea glass, and we need to toss it right back into the water and get back to Reconnecting to the American Promise. Let’s not get stuck in washed-up thinking.

Originally posted by Carl W. Hunt, 2/8/2015.

Momentum Misplaced

by Carl Hunt

Well, I’m actually talking about two kinds of momentum in this long-delayed post: the momentum slipping away from the Founders’ dream; and admittedly my own. As the primary author of this blog, it’s my responsibility to find the motivation and momentum in “my inner being” to post something meaningful at least once a month…that was the goal starting this out last February.

Events of the past two months dampened my motivation a wee bit. I didn’t lose it…I just misplaced it. Chuck, my brother and coauthor, and I will find it again soon (see the ending of this post), but for the time being, I’m afraid it’s lying underneath a pile of books and papers on my desk.

One reason for that pile on my desk is that I was fortunate to get back to a paying job. Since this new work is for the United States government, Chuck and I have been trying to figure out what we can say and how we can say it while still making the occasional comment (blog post) about how much America has been disconnected from its promise and its leaders.

We still passionately believe in our nation and the experimental system that was put in place in 1789 to make it work in a world that was quite unsteady at the time. In spite of our politicians’ hubris today in thinking they know better about how to run a government in 2014 than the Framers did back then, it’s still an experiment…the world is no less unsteady today either. Americans lose track of that too often.

The bottom line is that the Framers developed a way of thinking about national and international affairs that was novel for their time; that’s why their approach was different than anything other nations were doing in the late 18^th Century. Our politicians, courts and statesmen need to do the same thing for our time.

In truth, the United States is more of a laboratory for freedom, security and prosperity now than it was 225 years ago. This is a big factor in why we gravitated towards documents like The National Strategic Narrative by Wayne Porter and Puck Mykeby. As we noted, the “Narrative” recognizes the need to become more flexible and adaptive in this day and age and restart a dialogue among Americans about what’s important today. The Narrative offers to reexamine the empirical evidence we’ve gathered during the first 225 years of our nation’s “Great Experiment.”

Now on to my momentum misplacement: I won’t say that the election of November, 2014 inhibited my momentum but it does give me pause when I hear certain politicians say “the American people have spoken.” The evidence I observed in the post-election analyses indicated that most of the American people in fact did not speak (at least very loudly, not at 39.6% of the eligible electorate). For either party to keep claiming that “the American people have spoken” when so few actually did is childish and speaks to how poorly our politicians are at motivating Americans to be a part of our experiment.

That really shouldn’t be a momentum killer for any of us, however. It should offer us all a challenge to embrace the experimentation of our Founders and Reconnect to the American Promise. This is where our politicians should also be focusing: creating new and fresh opportunities for more people to succeed in achieving the American Promise and be part of our nation’s experiment. This is how our nation will regain the momentum our Founders established.

As for me, I’ll start clearing my desk more often and find my own momentum again. In fact, my friend Walt Natemeyer, about whom I wrote last March, has agreed to team up on a blog post soon that will address two important functions of leaders, political and otherwise: creating shared vision and developing a framework for common agreement, both critical duties of leaders that those in our Congress have apparently forgotten in recent years. Chuck and I are looking forward to collaborating with Walt on this project.

A Postscript: A bit unrelated to the post above, we just read a New York Times blog post entitled “Social Media Deepens Partisan Divides. But Not Always.” This post was based in part on a slightly dated paper called “Ideological Segregation Online and Offline” (which does offer empirical evidence, by the way…the kind of evidence that politicians should also be looking for). Both pieces were encouraging, particularly about our younger Americans. It appears that the battle between polarized media outlets may not be as good for channelizing Americans as some politicians had hoped. That’s good news for all of us as it offers to keep alive our critical need to Reconnect to the American Promise.

Originally posted by Carl W. Hunt, 11/21/2014.

Reclaiming Independence through Independents

Or: We’re Sick and Tired of Common Sense Ideas tossed off as “non-starters!”

October 17, 2014 could have been a bit of a watershed for readers of the Washington Post. The Post published an interesting convergence of ideas in what otherwise might have been viewed as three diverse columns by Michael Gerson, Catherine Rampell and Fareed Zakaria:

“Ebola challenges America’s ability to adapt”, by Michael Gerson, typically a conservative perspective. [1]

“Is sex only for rich people?” by Catherine Rampell, typically a Millennial (and often progressive) perspective. [2]

“Obama needs to dial back his Syria strategy” by Fareed Zakeria, typically a global and politically moderate to liberal perspective. [3]

These three seemingly disparate pieces are worth reading together, with an eye towards synthesis and integration, terms we rarely hear in our politics anymore. We won’t describe the contents of the columns, other than to say even though each of these authors comes from different points on the political spectrum, their arguments are persuasive and reasonable (certainly in the spirit of Public Reason we discussed last time).

Our “watershed moment” occurred as we discussed the futility of centrist politicians presenting reasonable and common sense options given the lack of “public reason” in our current political system. We thought about how we can and must do better in the exchange of ideas in this nation…that’s the power of public reason.

These three excellent columns, and the fact that they are practically useless within the context of the train wreck that now passes for American public policy, should cast a spotlight on the need for a way around the polarizing Democratic and Republican Parties. The way our two parties “work” together today is placing our American Experiment at grave risk.

With a little intellectual curiosity and imagination, taken together, these three Post columns suggest how to bring about meaningful and effective change and get America back on track, relying on a handful of states to elect Independent and Centrist candidates.

The November, 2014 election offers the seeds of a “work around” to the current mess. The candidates we mention here may not be optimal…they rarely are. Many might even say they are flawed by ambition or wrong-headedness. Admittedly, we don’t know because we only distinguish them by what we can read in the magazines and papers…these candidates aren’t on the ballots of our home states. But these candidates do potentially represent our future. For this, we urge objectivity and “public reason” to the voters who can elect these candidates.

We strongly recommend the voters of Kansas, South Dakota and Georgia (and maybe even Kentucky) consider voting for the candidates who actually appear to offer an independent streak. Greg Orman in Kansas and Larry Pressler in South Dakota are officially on the ballot as Independents. Imagine how powerful it could be for our Senate for these gentlemen to caucus with the other two Independents in the Senate – to be a strong voice for a Center of America which cares less about politics and more about our nation. Those four Senate voices and votes could be huge.

For example, consider how amazing it would be to hear that these four Independents refused to vote for the present leadership of the Senate—Republican or Democratic. This could set the stage for the beginning of a change our nation so desperately needs.

Rick Weiland is the Democrat in the South Dakota race. He may also be a good change as it appears he may have an independent streak, as well. In a sense, he is appealing since the national Democratic Party has shunned him for not being Harry Reid’s pick. However, we find it hard to not encourage a vote for a viable Independent whenever it is an option given the urgency of our current state of affairs.

We also include Georgia and Kentucky because we believe Michelle Nunn, even though she is running as a Democrat, to be very centrist. And, we feel we have to consider Kentucky also. Allison Grimes’ election would displace one of the current polarizing leaders of the Senate and send a message that the status quo is no longer acceptable. In a world of Independent thinking, we’d like to see both Nunn and Grimes say that they are disinclined to support present leadership of the Senate, as well. That would be courageous and independent…and maybe even what voters really want to hear.

We’ll also note that we have a lot of respect for Lamar Alexander and Susan Collins, Republicans from Tennessee and Maine for their centrist approach, but unfortunately they would almost certainly vote for the would-be Majority Leader, Mitch McConnell.

These hopefully independent thinkers and would-be legislators who are unfortunately affiliated with one of the two currently dominant parties could make a difference if they only showed more concern for America than their party. We believe Nunn and Grimes are more apt to do that compared to their highly partisan opponents.

But, even four Independents would make a difference if they can somehow remain as independent and strong as the current two have. Four Independents might also attract some of the independent nature of those in the major parties who decide America comes first!

In a more “independent world,” we would love to see Nunn, Grimes and even some of the current Republican candidates, running and legislating as Independents. In reality, we understand that it’s almost impossible to win as an Independent. After all, we see the national Republican machine rushing to the aid of Pat Roberts and Mike Rounds in Kansas and South Dakota. That’s what party politics does.

We can only hope the voters of Kansas and South Dakota at a minimum will seize this opportunity to vote to secure “a way around” our present political disaster. We so desperately need these voters to exert some independent influence in the Senate and in their home states and reinvigorate the flow of good ideas and solutions for our nation.

Yes, we are so tired of common sense approaches being non-starters. Four Independents who believe in the original Independence of our nation and our politics could make a real difference for America!

Originally posted by Carl and Chuck Hunt, 10/19/2014.

[1] The Gerson piece is focused on learning lessons at the federal level, on both sides of the aisle.

[2] The Rampell piece is focused on leveling the playing field about sex education across all parts of our population, taking the politics out of such an important and pervasive topic.

[3] The Zakaria piece is focused on getting strategy and rhetoric aligned and reducing the political influence on another tricky Mid-East situation.

The Exercise of “Public Reason”

In 1997, Harvard philosopher John Rawls wrote a piece for the Chicago Law Review titled “The Idea of Public Reason Revisited.” This article challenged Americans to think about the arguments they make to each other. It argued that while reliance on ideologically-based political dogmas may or may not be sound, the arguments from these baselines do not make for reasonable means to attempt to persuade others to see a public good in the ideology.

So…we finally have a logical explanation for why the Right and Left keep talking past each other and why the Edges of each side have so little hope of convincing others of their positions.

Rawls noted that “Public Reason “concerns how the political relation is to be understood.” He went on to observe what has become ever more obvious in today’s politically charged environment: that those “who reject constitutional democracy with its criterion of reciprocity will of course reject the very idea of public reason.”

Rawls wrote that “Citizens realize that they cannot reach agreement or even approach mutual understanding on the basis of their irreconcilable comprehensive doctrines. In view of this, they need to consider what kinds of reasons they may reasonably give one another when fundamental political questions are at stake.”

Most importantly, Rawls added that “Central to the idea of public reason is that it neither criticizes nor attacks any comprehensive doctrine, religious or nonreligious, except insofar as that doctrine is incompatible with the essentials of public reason and a democratic polity.” That, unfortunately, is not where American politics seems to be today in terms of the parties communicating with each other. [1]

This idea of “public reason” is very much worth “revisiting” in today’s Edge-driven political environment.

We’ve mentioned how we both grew up in a Texas that was essentially conservative-democratic-leaning. Chuck was still there as the trend was starting to shift to more red than blue after Carl had departed for the Army in 1972. But, aside from the eccentricities of growing up Texan, we both still observed a good deal of Rawls’ concept of Public Reason. The popular slogan of “Don’t Mess with Texas” (designed to keep litter off the highways) grew out of a “don’t mess with me and mine and I won’t mess with you and yours!” Our Texas was a live and let live kind of place and quite reasonable-seeming back in the day. [2]

We remember a Texas where people could talk to each other and not past each other.

What we admired about our Texas of the 60s, 70s and 80s was the notion of “live and let live.” While Texas of 30-50 years ago was somewhat confusing in its split loyalties to the Stars and Stripes, Stars and Bars and the Lone Star from a cultural standpoint, it was a land of great opportunity, and generally reasonable in those days. At least in the cities and larger towns, Texas of that age tended to reflect objectivity about opportunity regardless of background. Our Texas leaned towards Public Reason.

Neither of us lives in Texas anymore, but that’s beside the point. Neither of us really wants to live in Texas today, more because of how hot it is and how much the state has tampered with what we consider to be objective K-12 education. But it also seems like a lot of the dominant political philosophy has abandoned “live and let live” principles, not unlike what is happening elsewhere in America in 2014.

Texas politics today don’t seem to be a reasoned conservatism as much as a knee-jerk conservatism that at times seems…well, mostly mindless. The people of Texas are still our kindred souls and they generally are awesome folk that usually demonstrate an appreciation of public reason. Unfortunately, the politicians Texans elect tend not to feel the same way. So, we’ll stay “Texpatriates” for a while longer. This could be an object lesson for the rest of America, however.

It is so important that our nation (including Texas) return to an appreciation of Public Reason. As this election season approaches and we witness the appalling lack of Public Reason where politicians feel they cannot argue in reasoned tones that reflect the goals of public service, let’s reflect once more on what Professor Rawls wrote less than 15 years ago: citizens of this nation “cannot reach agreement or even approach mutual understanding on the basis of their irreconcilable comprehensive doctrines” nor can we continue to mindlessly attack each other oblivious to the commonality we all share as Americans.

We should challenge each other, just as our Founders did in Philadelphia in 1776 and 1787, but let’s exercise the same courtesy and sense of compromise our forefathers did in that day. Our goal cannot be to tear each other down, but must be to build up our nation. Let’s exercise Public Reason on behalf of keeping America strong, balanced and worth passing on to our progeny.

Originally posted by Carl and Chuck Hunt, 10/15/2014

NOTES:

[1] Rawls devoted a great deal of the paper laying out the “structure” of public reason, noting that it had five basic aspects: fundamental political questions to which public reason applies; the people to whom it applies (e.g., public officials and candidates for office); the content of public reason as it pertains to justice; the applications of these aspects in the form of legitimate law for a democratic nation; and the citizens’ role in ensuring the principles of public reason satisfy the criterion of reciprocity (essentially, the equitable give and take between parties and citizens): “The Idea of Public Reason Revisited. For a concise background and photo of this remarkable philosopher, please see his biography in the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

[2] To be sure, bias and prejudice did exist in the Texas we experienced (mostly Houston), but it was at least a “laid-back” kind of bias and prejudice (if that makes any difference)!

Renewing American Vigor: Consumption and Production

In spite of the way this title may sound, this is NOT about renewing America by making and buying more “stuff.” This blog post accompanies the delivery of the RAP essay entitled “Renewing American Vigor: Transforming Consumption and Production.” After two months of promising this essay and drafting many versions, we decided to just post the draft as it is today, knowing we’ll never get it “perfect.”

The essay is several times longer than our typical blog posts, but it took a few more words to report on how production and consumption have led to the state of the American Promise today. Our intent is to demonstrate how transforming the production and consumption of “stuff” is at the heart of what we can do as individuals to regenerate and renew American vigor and potential to more broadly fulfill the American Promise.

The American ideal of possessing “stuff” has roots in the influence John Locke had on George Mason and Thomas Jefferson in their respective writings of the Virginia Declaration of Rights and the American Declaration of Independence. [1] We noted this in a post that introduced what we called a Platform for RAP (called FAPITCA at the time).

Our essay on production and consumption in America shares these roots. We’ve also sought to expand the discussion to talk about sustainability of the American Promise and way of life through smarter production and ownership of property and ideas in light of what’s possible today. We address consumption, production and “ownership” of ideas as additional items of “stuff” we sometimes tend to hold on to all too long.

The essay traces an important part of the story of how Americans think about the acquisition and possession of “stuff” (again, where “stuff” means both physical and intellectual possessions). We go back and cite previous work in this area by Betty and Mike Sproule, and Annie Leonard, as we’ve previously written about in “…and our Posterity…”. Their work introduces important driving forces that have led to the challenges we have with production and consumption in America. The essay also introduces the role of marketing and investing in the world of American consumption.

Since this blog is about America in the Connected Age, we devote a good deal of the essay to how we might harness the tools of information technology to transform consumption and production. As we note in the essay, the “problem is that we have been unable to see the forest of opportunity in a new age of connectivity because all we can see are the trees that compose our individual relationships to the present and the future.” We make the case for the imperative of leveraging information technologies available to us today.

Additionally, we revisit one of our very favorite authors in American history and culture, John D. MacDonald, creator of the well-known “Travis McGee” series of novels. It turns out that the ol’ beach bum Travis and his sidekick, Meyer, had a lot of insight about America today even though they talked about an America of 40-50 years ago. [2]

Finally, we wrap up the current version of the essay with a review of some highly pertinent insights from our friends Wayne Porter and Puck Mykleby, the authors of A National Strategic Narrative. We’ve written about Wayne and Puck’s work in several previous posts, but in the essay we try to tie some of their relevant thoughts to the ideas of transformed consumption in America. Thanks to Wayne, Puck and Betty Sproule for making the Narrative so accessible!

Note that we call this the “current version of the essay.” This simply means that we understand an undertaking like the essay can only be a draft in the Connected Age. Our networked world changes quickly and an essay about production and consumption in America needs to maintain some level of fluidity, as well. This also means that we intend for our readers to help us maintain this essay through their comments and edits. We mean this…please help us make this essay better!

We hope you find value in the time you might invest in “Renewing American Vigor: Transforming Consumption and Production.”

Originally posted by Carl and Chuck Hunt, 9/4/2014/.

Notes:

[1] As noted in the essay, George Mason even had designs on transforming American consumption back in September, 1787, while the Constitutional Convention was wrapping up the final drafts of the Constitution.

[2] Contemporary mystery and adventure fiction readers who enjoy novels by Carl Hiaasen and Lee Child (“Jack Reacher”) will appreciate their respective Forewords in the last two re-releases of the “Travis McGee” series.

Reconnecting to the American Promise

Change is good, or so “they” say. We had enough comments from “they” that we made what we think is a significant change to the blog. We hope it’s a good one (or “they” will probably let us know again!).

The change, as demonstrated by the new page titles, is of course streamlining the name of the blog to Reconnecting to the American Promise (RAP) from Fulfilling the American Promise in the Connected Age (FAPITCA).

There’s no question that the acronym is shorter, as well as easier to pronounce, but it may even be closer to the truth we hope to talk about in the blog: throughout its over two centuries of existence, America was indeed connected to the promise of its origins, we started losing that connection in the last few decades, and now we as a nation finally recognize we need to reestablish our connection to the American Promise.

If we don’t reconnect Americans to the American Promise, pretty soon there won’t be an America that our Founders would recognize. That’s what we want to talk about in the future as well as build on the foundation of the first sixth months of the existence of this blog.

That’s right…we’ve been doing FAPITCA, now RAP, for over six months now and this is the 39^th posting. When we started, we didn’t know how long we would try to tell the story of America and its Promise, but we’ve had just enough interest and participation that it seems more than reasonable to keep going.

With almost 50,000 words published, we hope we’ve appropriately reflected on the failings in today’s elected leadership to keep Americans connected to the American Promise, while we’ve pointed to the hope the future of America in the Connected Age offers. We’re hardly out of the woods, but new generations of Americans, growing up with Connected Age technologies and thinking are now poised to help us get back on track. We just need to make sure our young people understand what’s at stake.

Our hope and our objectives for RAP are to keep telling the story of an America reconnecting to the original hopes and dreams of our Founders as we leverage the spirit and vigor of our youth. With your continued help, we’ll keep telling that story. It’s definitely time to Reconnect to the American Promise!

Originally posted by Carl and Chuck Hunt, 8/25/2014.

The Platform, Part VI: The Honor of Public Service

This final post on the FAPITCA Platform comes “straight from the heart.” Both of us have worked for government throughout our career. Carl started as a Houston, Texas police officer at age 19, while Chuck began his service to the nation as a Presidential Management Intern for the US Bureau of Land Management  at age 24. Carl completed a 30-year career in the United States Army in 2006 and Chuck continues to work in the federal sector after almost 30 years of service. Our sister served 20 years in the US Air Force and is still a public high school teacher.

Fortunately, in spite of politically-driven attacks on American governance (often by so-called government servants of the more “conservative” party), many still serve America working for the various levels of government: our nation is better as a result. Americans working on behalf of America, providing services to other Americans and foreign visitors makes our nation stronger and more representative of who we are. To be sure, we can always work for America more efficiently and more objectively, but Americans working for America is a good thing.

Representing Americans as elected leaders in office is also a great service, and even though we’ve been critical of our federal legislators in this blog, we also honor their service when performed in the intended role rather than exploitation of the profession for personal power or gain. While helping to draft the United States Constitution, Benjamin Franklin talked about “the classical republican ideal of ‘disinterested public service’”…and hoping that “‘every member of Congress’ (would) consider himself rather as a representative of the whole, than as an agent for the interests of a particular state.” Franklin, also foreseeing the role of political parties, knew how important public service on behalf of all Americans was, having been in that capacity for much of his professional life. [1]

Our nation and our citizens require and should demand honorable public service to make America great. This service may take place in many forms, including government, academia and industry that supports our economic growth and fairly promotes access to equal opportunity for all qualified to serve. [2] Without this level of service, our nation would likely fall into the ruin of corporate greed and corrupt political “leadership” that far exceeds what we consider problematic today. We’d be a lot worse off without dedicated service to our nation.

There are threats to effective public service, however. Most of these threats are politically motivated in an attempt to define what is acceptable governance and public service. Since the Reagan era, conservative politics claim government is too big, too inefficient and too generous to Americans and immigrants who are unemployed, homeless or who do not have access to a reasonable level of education. This side tends to favor lower taxes and less government interference in Americans’ lives. [3]

Liberal politics tend to support collection of more and “fairer” taxes, the creation of more opportunities for education and employment, and a government of sufficient size that it can adequately oversee what should be a balance of receipts (of taxes) and expenditures (legislatively approved obligations). Of course, conservatives also claim they want balance in the budget, as well, as long as that balance includes intense scrutiny of public servants and the funds they discharge. We agree…it’s hard not to agree with the idea of reasonable scrutiny and oversight.  It takes capable, inspired Americans to manage the day-to-day delivery of critical government services: clean water, safe drugs, social security payments, national and border security, etc., and provide daily internal scrutiny and oversight.

Both sides say they want balance eventually, but rarely accomplish this balance as there’s always some emergency like a war or recession that demands the budget objectives be delayed “temporarily.” This condition in America is no longer an “emergency” however, but more the way of life in an America that is fighting to be competitive in a globally rising community that includes, among others, China and India.

If this is the case, however, it seems as though we need more and better trained public servants to govern in this new normal, however, not less. We need our best involved in government and service to America!

The budget and fair administration of receipts and expenditures is really only one part of good public service. Another part is good old fashioned “customer service,” whether accomplished by sworn government officials or not; this involves dedication to our nation and concern for our fellow citizens, including fair access to equal opportunities to succeed as Americans and legal immigrants.

This is where things seem to be falling apart these days. As a nation of Americans we’ve quit worrying about the opportunity and income gaps and the advantages of closing those gaps on behalf of our nation. Instead, we’ve been thinking largely about ourselves and what’s in it for us. Service, unless it has an immediate benefit to us as individuals, is for someone else to worry about and to deliver.

Here’s the bottom line: if we are constantly condemning public service and those who dedicate themselves to it; if we fail to take care of our fellow citizens and ensure they have opportunity to compete and even become great public servants, academicians or business people; and if we fail to challenge the growing gaps between the wealthy and the rest of us, how can we ever hope to remain a great nation and a meaningful example to the rest of the world?

Public Service is an honorable profession. In many cases, our governments hire the best, not just those who can’t do anything else. This is equally true among the Millennial generation. [4] These servants don’t seek wealth but rather fair access to opportunity…they deserve our respect and support.

Our government services may not pay as well as the commercial and academic worlds perhaps, but government service offers the chance to serve our great nation in ways that are not possible any other way. If some among great Americans (our best presidents and leaders, members of the military, teachers and many others) had declined to serve, this nation would likely have failed long ago. They were there for us, and we need to be there for our future generations.

Please think about that the next time you are tempted to complain about the “evils of government” that happens when some politically-driven claim attempts to garner votes…that kind of claim really needs to be critically tested. Americans know how to think better than that.  Americans must once again learn to discern and embrace good government, and reject extremist calls for zero…or excessive… government.

Originally posted by Carl and Chuck Hunt, 8/10/2014.

NOTES:

[1] Beeman, R., Plain Honest Men: The Making of the American Constitution, Random House, NY, 2009, page 151. Also, back in February, 2014, we posted Thomas Paine on Honor and the Congress, in which we recounted Paine’s essay “Reflections on Titles,” a piece in which he commented on the honor of those who served in the Continental Congress and drafted and signed the Declaration of Independence. We refer the reader to those pieces for more reflections on honorable public service as an elected official.

[2] In fact, we also honor the “public” service of businesses that do in fact support the American way of life, furthering access to economic and social opportunity…we could not have succeeded in either war or peace without their support (e.g., the accomplishments of industry in World War II). We have a more difficult time “honoring” businesses that hide behind the need to serve their stockholders BEFORE the nation that makes it possible for businesses to exist. To be sure, stockholders provide investment (for their own personal gain), but without the protections that objective, effective government provides, business would have a much more difficult environment in which to thrive as they have in America throughout its history. Businesses which put loyalty to stockholders before the nation that nurtures their growth should really consider their priorities. This is particularly true in the case of businesses that seek to move their headquarters oversees to avoid the responsibility of paying taxes to support our nation. This so-called process of “inversion” strips America of needed support and creation of increased opportunity within our own borders.

[3] This does not seem to apply to many conservative seniors who still want their social security payments and Medicare access, but who says you can’t have your cake and want to eat it, too?

[4] See for example:  Lavigna, B. and Flato, J. January, 2014 blog post: “Millennials Are Attracted to Public Service, But Government Needs to Deliver.” This article noted that “federal agencies were among the most preferred employers for students across main fields of study: the FBI, National Institutes of Health, NASA, Department of State, and Peace Corps all ranked among the top ten, alongside companies like Google, Walt Disney Company, Apple, and Microsoft. Government employers are particularly popular with humanities and natural science students.” Also see: Fournier, R. “The Outsiders: How Can Millennials Change Washington If They Hate It?” which in spite of the name of the article documents how Millennials “in general, are fiercely committed to community service” but they “don’t see politics or government as a way to improve their communities, their country, or the world.” Sigh…again, edge-driven politics are jeopardizing our nation’s future. Fournier’s August, 2013 Atlantic Magazine study indicated that Millennials are increasingly less likely to enter into politics and government, a trend we must all somehow contribute to reversing to ensure our nation’s future. For one bit of recent bright news, see Millennial authors Eric Zenisek and Mike Stinnett in their Fortune Magazine piece, Why millennials should ditch corporate jobs for public service…their conclusion: “It’s going to take a renewed commitment to service to repair our country. Millennials are up for the task.”

 

Rethinking the American Narrative

by Chuck Hunt [1]

For some time, I have been questioning when the American narrative actually began. From reading the popular histories today, it seems we are fixated on the late 1700s, when our foundational documents and institutions begin to emerge. The period leading up to July of 1776 seems a popular date.

This question resurfaced recently when I started reflecting on the differences between Americans and Europeans. After having spent over five years in Europe, mostly in France, representing the people of the United States, I began to appreciate the differences between the outlooks of Europeans and Americans. The optimism and the “can do” orientation of many Americans I knew stood in contrast to the pragmatism, realism and at times cynicism of many Europeans.

These experiences led me to question how the American narrative diverged from European perspectives and cultures. Many Americans today are descended from Europeans who arrived here on the shores of America hundreds of years ago bringing with them European belief systems and values. How did we so quickly (in European terms) transform from “subjects” of monarchs to citizens seeking self-governance and freedom that comes with independence?

I believe the answer to this question is that the American Narrative only has a portion of its roots in Europe, as well as Africa and Asia. At the root of the American Narrative is a story of the coevolution of many different influences from throughout the world, including those who lived here when the Europeans first arrived.

American Indians were here long before the Europeans – they were the original American sources of influence on the Europeans. Whether we were cognizant of it or not, from the earliest days of Western colonization American Indians shaped our narrative. When we consider the basic structure of our government and its founding documents, the way we would come to wage war, the way we nourished ourselves, or even our quest for freedom, it’s very likely that American Indians played a fundamental, even original role in shaping what has become the American Narrative. [2]

Sadly, due to a variety of forces ranging from ignorance to arrogance to racism, we seemed to have systematically minimized these influences. There are times in our history when we even demonized the contributions of our native peoples, forcibly taking their land and driving their cultures into near-obscurity.

My self-questions suggested that it is perhaps time we go back and begin to celebrate these influences as distinctly American…perhaps we would benefit today from embracing our American Indian history. In others words, maybe it’s time we start thinking of our American Narrative as beginning to emerge thousands of years ago. We might even consider deleting the word “Indian” in the previous sentence and declare that we should “embrace our American history.”

I use the word “embrace” instead of pride in the foregoing paragraph because it’s a mixture of things in which we can take pride, but also honestly acknowledges where we have fallen short of embracing values so eloquently expressed in core documents from the revolutionary era and beyond. Notice I didn’t use the term “founding documents” because perhaps we should revisit the notion of “the founding.” Perhaps some of the initial founding concepts began to emerge well before Europeans even arrived in what would become America.

Just as we likely embraced wisdom based on thousands of years of reflection by native peoples as we designed our government, maybe it is time we do likewise in figuring out how to come back together as a nation and create a more sustainable future for each other that our native forbearers envisioned.

Recently, I had the honor of visiting the leadership of the Onondaga Nation in New York [3]. I had an epiphany as I sat in their rustic but elegant longhouse. As I listened to their leaders, Sid Hill and Oren Lyons, among others, it hit me that they were sharing with me wisdom gained from perhaps thousands of years of experience and reflection. I was there as a representative of a government that was only 238 years old and it struck me that we have much to learn from these people who have lived in this part of the world far longer than my nation and even European nations have existed. My Native American hosts spoke with a passion for peace and protecting the environment that was so thoughtful and sincere that it transcended any of the childlike politics that currently plague mainstream America.

For example, Oren Lyons introduced me to the concept of “One spoon, one dish.” At the risk of butchering his wisdom, I perceived he meant that we all have one spoon, but we share the bowl (earth) and we are to take just what we need and keep it clean. It’s a simple way to acknowledge concern for your fellow being, conservation of what nature has given us, and avoidance of greed. Oren Lyons also stressed the importance of making decisions based on the welfare of the next seven generations. Wouldn’t the current generations of young Americans like to know that Boomers were thinking like that when they started having children?

Unquestionably, some of what was shared with me would be labeled by some of our edge-driven countrymen as socialistic or environmental extremism. I would urge them to stop applying 20^th Century philosophical concepts to profound, centuries-old ways of thinking. What could be more authentically American than the voice of this tribal leader based on the teachings of people living in this land well before any Europeans arrived?

This recent experience in New York leads me to start thinking about an American Narrative that embraces thousands of years of wisdom. I’m ready to proudly embrace the roots of our nation’s heritage and give credit where it is due. Most importantly, just as we did a couple of hundred years ago, we need to listen to our native, indigenous wisdom to chart a revised course for our nation to get out of this poisonous political cul-de-sac in which we find ourselves and start taking better care of each other and our environment.

For your own inspiration (and perhaps epiphany), watch this short video of Oren Lyons explaining his awakening concerning the environment and wisdom passed on to him by his uncle:

Originally posted by Chuck Hunt, 7/26/2014.

Notes:

[1] We’re taking a brief departure from the FAPITCA Platform series to post this special piece on the “American Narrative,” a topic that will be incorporated from time-to-time in future posts. This proposal about rethinking our nation’s narrative is not precisely related to the National Strategic Narrative we’ve discussed in previous posts, but may have a bearing on that work as well.

[2] For a visual background on America before the mass arrival of Europeans, see Native America before European Colonization.

[3] The Onondaga Nation is a member of the Haudenosaunee (“People of the Long House”), an alliance of native nations united for hundreds of years by traditions, beliefs and cultural values. Also referred to as the Iroquois confederacy or Six Nations, the Haudenosaunee consist of the Mohawk, Oneida, Cayuga, Seneca, Onondaga Nations and Tuscarora Nations.